Will I love Nina Simone's Gum?

Warren Ellis of Nick Cave's band the Bad Seeds has written one of the most bizarre and stand out memoirs of 2021. At a concert in 1999 Ellis saw the star Nina Simone stick her gum on her grand piano and launch into a performance. Afterwards Ellis crawls to the stage and retrieves and treasures the gum. He has it cast in silver for display in a Nick Cave exhibition, with a version cast by Ann Demeulemeester the fashion designer. The book's photographs trace the gum's various incarnations. A touching memoir in which Ellis muses about creativity, family and friendships… show more.

Believe it or not, this actually is a book about Nina Simone’s gum and the lengths to which the author goes to protect and memorialize a piece she chewed during a concert she played, and he saved in a napkin. There is a lot of explanation of process and documentation, so it feels like an art book meets a how-to manual.

But it’s also a memoir of sorts about the author’s life as a musician playing with Nick Cave and his own band, the Dirty Three. I love how this book looks and feels and manages to be several different… show more.

As someone that lovingly collected fallen sequins from a theatre dressing room floor after a show as a kid, I relate hard to this story of the intense love and awe Warren Ellis has for Nina Simone, and for seeing the world through a lens of music in general. His snowballing obsession with Nina Simone’s discarded gum (which I once had the pleasure of seeing, back when it lived unceremoniously inside a plastic bag on a shelf) makes for a wild absurdist ride through true love.